Definitely First Blood

Happy New Year! It’s 2021, we’ve got another New Year's bracket and this time it’s bigger than ever! We pit the fierce final folks from the Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises against each other until only one remains! This one was tough and there was a surprise Bronze medalist! Also, this is only our opinion and only for fun. We’re sure people will disagree and that’s cool!

Our stockings are hung and our cheeks are rosy as we draw closer to Christmas. This week we’re talking underrated Christmas horror P2! Written by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur and Franck Khalfoun(who also directs) and starring Rachel Nichols and Wes Bentley, P2 is about busy and successful Angela who becomes the target of the incel parking security guard in her building on Christmas Eve. It’s really well constructed and whether intentional or not, very prescient! Both leads give great nuanced performances, there’s good violence and some really tense moments! Merry Christmas Thomas!

Imagine ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ but 10 years earlier… and instead of hitting somebody with their car, a drunk, incel guy skis off a ledge. Ok, maybe it’s more like ‘Terror Train’ with skiing? Or ‘And Then There Were None’ with yuppies and copious amounts of male objectification? ‘Slaughter High’ in a Utah ski chalet? This week we’re discussing 1988 slasher film ICED!!! Four years after Jeff (who may or may not have been friends with a group of young skiers) dies on the slopes, the friend group all receive invitations to try out a timeshare in the mountains. Sure enough they start getting killed by somebody in ski-drag! Iced is directed by Jeff Kwitny and stars Slumber Party Massacre alums Debra DeLiso and Joseph Alan Johnson(who also wrote the film), Wednesday Addams herself, Lisa Loring, Doug Stevenson and Ron Kologie as the would-be victims. It certainly has its faults and we were split on this one but overall, it’s a fun and campy slasher flick that desperately needs a remaster!

The Christmas creep has begun! We’re getting into the spirit of the season with Fabrice A. Zaphiratos’ 1983 supernatural slasher-lite BLOODBEAT!!! This movie is a wild ride… it stars Helen Benton, Terry Brown, Claudia Peyton, Dana Day and James Fitzgibbons as a family being mildly terrorized by the spirit of a Samurai(kind of…). There’s magic, psychic visions, various glowing colours and a lot of questions. The editing is a real standout for this one and overall it’s too wacky to miss! DON’T DARE HURT MY KIDS!

Giant rats! Xenomorphs! Zombies(?)! Mutant babies! This week we’re talking about David DeCoteau’s CREEPOZOIDS! A group of young deserters played by the always delightful Linnea Quigley, Ashlyn Gere, Ken Abraham and Richard L. Hawkins seek refuge in a seemingly abandoned bunker where scientists have been conducting genetic experiments to eliminate human beings’ need for food… because of… amino acids. It’s a short but fun movie that we really enjoyed until the last act where things at once get bizarre and also very boring. Plus, Christopher subjects Mitch to another game of DECOTEAU PLOT… OR NOT? JUSTICE FOR BLANCA!

We’re back with another DFB Shorts this week and Christopher’s (poorly)attempting to put those Duolingo lessons to work. We’re talking about short film PLAY. PAUSE. KILL! Written & Directed by David Teixeira and starring Anasthasia Hilda as Julie and Lucas Dutilleul as Henry, PLAY. PAUSE. KILL. is a beautifully shot,  dream-like short with a great score that really plays with expectations. It instantly draws you into Julie’s world and Anasthasia Hilda does a fantastic job making you care about the character, which makes the pay-off at the end all the better! You can watch the short here: https://youtu.be/7pnwKFiiaUM! And follow David Teixeira on Instagram @davidemmanuelt!

Happy HalloOoOoOoOweEeEeeen! We’re celebrating the best holiday with Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Written and Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and starring genre icon Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin, this entry to the franchise is entirely its own thing. It looks fantastic, the plot is really creative, it really shoots for the fences and definitely has a charm but its pretty inconsistent and lacks any real character development. We hope everybody has a safe and fun pandemic-ween!

This week we’ve got phobias galore with THE FEAR: HALLOWEEN NIGHT! Mike’s dad was an axe murderer, so naturally he has to get his friends together at his familial home to do a ceremony to rid them all of their fears. However, central to this ceremony is Morty; He’s a life-size wooden golem with a penchant for killing people and corrupting minds. The Fear: Halloween Night is directed by Chris Angel(Not that one), written by Kevin Richards and stars genre icon Betsy Palmer, Gordon Currie, Stacy Grant, Rachel Hayward, Byron Chief-Moon and MYC Agnew. It’s fun with creative and clever kills but definitely lacks a spark and polish probably due to budgetary restraints. #JUSTICEFORTRISH!

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! We didn’t record a full episode this week but because Christopher has too much time on his hands, he wanted to do something… and that something ended up being complaining about The Haunting of Bly Manor!

We’re dipping into childhood waters this week with the first, and arguably one of the best Goosebumps episodes, THE HAUNTED MASK!!! Starring Kathryn Long, Kathryn Short, Colin Fox and Amos Crawley, this classic is about the easily scared Carly Beth who gets more than she bargained for with her Halloween mask. The acting is really good, Kathryn Long does an amazing job and its a great trip down Nostalgia Lane! THIS IS YOUR FACE NOW!